This past June, I had the good fortune to attend the SLA conference in Vancouver as the recipient of the SLA Toronto Student-to-Conference award. As a new graduate with a prior career in publishing, I had attended many international book fairs but never an international library conference. I was looking forward to opportunities for professional development and networking, and was not disappointed.
The Vancouver Convention Centre overlooks beautiful Burrard Inlet and is a short walk from Gastown, Stanley Park, and the city’s beaches. During the opening general session on Sunday morning, Shane Pointe, an elder from the Musqueam First Nation, spoke. The Musqueam were among the first inhabitants of the area, and he offered a special welcome, rather generously likening librarians to medicine people, as keepers of information.
As a new information professional, I was particularly interested in the career-related sessions. There was plenty of great advice to be found at ‘Fellows and Rising Stars,’ the ‘Big Data and Job Opportunities Panel,’ and ‘Intelligence Roles for Information Professionals.’
‘KM from the Trenches,’ with Toronto’s own Ulla de Stricker and Connie Crosby, featured tons of insight into project management, client expectations, organizational culture, matching user requirements to appropriate technologies (look for people’s workarounds!), and the importance of human oversight in Knowledge Management. ‘Government Information Access in the US and Canada: Implications for Librarians’ stressed the importance of open data initiatives, and information policy, in preserving access to government documents and websites.
One of the most memorable sessions was ‘Social Media for Investigative Professionals or How to Find People Who Don’t Want to Be Found.’ The speaker, Julie Clegg, is an ex-police detective who now does investigative work for a private firm. Her demonstration of online intelligence tools to an overflowing room was terrifying and fascinating. Outside of their applications in fighting crime, I could see many of these resources being useful for prospect research and competitive intelligence.
What I took away from many of the sessions were suggested resources to explore later. From ‘Data Visualization,’ I made note of a book called Show Me the Numbers. From the packed session ‘60 Sites in 60 Minutes,’ I gathered a long list of new bookmarks.
The Info Expo was closest to my experience of publishing trade fairs and in hindsight, I didn’t take as full advantage of it as I could have. For future conferences, I would allocate more time to exploring new products and services, and speaking to vendors.
Some of the most enjoyable moments of the conference came from meeting and chatting with others while waiting for sessions to begin. These impromptu talks with former strangers yielded valuable tips and great conversation. Other social events, like the Canadian reception, and the CI Division Dinner, provided time to meet and better get to know other SLA members who attended. The conference being in Vancouver meant that I had the opportunity to meet with my west coast law office colleagues. The ‘Fellows and First-Timers’ get-together on the Saturday evening was full of friendly faces with lots of tips on taking full advantage of the conference. I met board members who were generous with their advice, and other recent graduates, eager to make new connections and talk about what they do.
It was impossible to attend all of the sessions that caught my eye but fortunately, many attendees have blogged and tweeted about what they saw, heard, and learned. I’m very grateful to SLA Toronto for the opportunity to attend, and I look forward to making it to the conference in Boston next year.
—Catherine MacGregor
Catherine graduated this spring from the University of Toronto’s iSchool where she served as co-chair of the student SLA group. She is currently working as a law librarian at Fasken Martineau and is taking over as SLA Toronto’s New Information Professional Programming Coordinator.